


Your little hours

by emmadelosnardos



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Epistolary, F/M, Femlock, Genderbending, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/pseuds/emmadelosnardos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John loves so freely, but Sherlock's love is singular.</p><p>Fem!lock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Edna St Vincent Millay.

One realizes that, having cultivated no female friendships in one's first thirty-five years, nor any close acquaintances of either gender, that the choices of whom to consult in matters of a tender nature are, shall we say, rather slim. 

One does rather regret, at times, this purposeful solitude, this careful misanthropy, even if borne of the sober intention to rid oneself of past unsavory companions (here’s looking at you, Victor), the justified mistrust of one’s relatives (no names need mention), the well-practiced separation of _pleasure_ from _profession_.

And still.

One does feel it would be better to write _to_ someone, instead of to oneself. For this little hour, at least, till you come back (home).

* * *

What would I say, John, if I wrote to you?

Would I tell you how ordinary you appeared to me at first, how facile? How easily I thought I’d wind you round my smallest finger, as light and fine as silk thread on a thimble? You seemed utterly within my grasp, all mine if I wanted you — which of course meant that I didn’t. Desire is born of lack, not of possession. I had you too easily, I had you practically from the beginning, your all-too-ready trust in me already inducing boredom, the light-winged moths of decay. I wanted none of it — and, oh, how I regret that not-wanting, the initial absence of desire, the renunciation of all possibility before it presented itself —

You stood before me in Mike’s lab, practically at attention, screaming _military_ and _Desert War,_ and _neo_ - _imperialist prat_ and _still carries a gun,_ and I thought, ‘I might as well go to America, if I wanted a firearm for a flatmate.’ But my accounts (yes, plural, yes, I keep separate accounts, separate identities; what of it?), my accounts were running low, and Mycroft was knocking on my door for one thing and another, and I needed someone to run interference, someone Mycroft would trust —

(Does that surprise you? That I’d choose a soldier because my brother would trust a soldier? Maybe I trust a soldier, too, any soldier with his blind loyalty and _his_ firearm, made _my_ firearm in short order, as it did happen.)

You don’t know how close I was to renting the second room to a social worker from Essex. The sublease was all but signed, but I ignored her calls and told Mrs Hudson she was wanted for fare evasion _on a grand scale_ (too grand to entirely explain to Emma, that dearly gullible old thing), and the room was available again. Available for you, of course.

I know you think I planned it all out, that I knew of you ahead of time, or had heard something from Mike before you came to the lab. You never quite got over the shock of that first, spectacular deduction —

(And I was _quite_ spectacular that day, if my own word can be trusted on the matter: I was spectacular, on-point, _brilliant,_ even, before you arrived; flown high as I was on ten shots of espresso, a new pair of pumps, and a highly desired commission from one of Mycroft’s colleagues. Your arrival was the unexpected culmination to what had been, _ex ante,_ quite the day.)

— or you flatter yourself I knew ahead of time, and had picked you out of the throng of eager applicants to the flat, all those unemployed doctor-soldier types that Mike had taken under his wing (all that multitude). But really, dear — dearest, really, no. I didn’t know you, or know _of_ you, or know why _you_ , and no one else but you, John, no one else but you, would be the person I’m writing to tonight.

* * *

 I’m drunk on Spanish _cava_ and Schubert’s _Lieder_ , treasures which you likely know nothing about but would deem ‘lovely’ if I were to show them to you (make you taste them, make you hear them). Is it because _I’m_ the one to show you things that you are so appreciative? I like to believe it is. Or is it because you are, at heart, so ready to value the gifts of others, regardless of their source? I fear the latter.

But, I whisper, hopeful: You couldn’t tell Bach from Boccherini when you came to Baker Street, and now—

Speaking of appreciation, of things that I appreciated, put a price to, or to which no price can be applied—those ballet tickets you bought for us; those I appreciated. Tchaikovsky rubs a bit too close to the wrong end of romanticism, for my taste, but _you_ bought the tickets, John, and you said you thought I would like the ballet, in that tone of voice that said that you meant something else entirely, a question about my past, combined with that flagrant way you have of running your eyes up and down my body, and the question was on the tip of your tongue, _if I had been a dancer once?_ , and I would not satisfy your curiosity on that account, but I did accept your invitation. We saw _Eugene Onegin,_ and you said _he_ reminded you of _me_ , Onegin did, and I knew what you meant (how could I not know what you meant?). That haughty man, that urbane dilettante, selfish and self-absorbed, unable to love Tatiana when she offered him her whole, sweet being. Do you see me like that, really, John? When I, in writing this letter, do more resemble Tatiana than that brute Onegin?

(You might say it’s not the the same thing, to write a letter you never intend to give to its recipient.)

So what letter would I, should I write to you?

What could I say that would convince you?

You think I’m heartless, when everything I do is to hide how very red my own heart is.

Not _everything_ I do, but what I want to say is — the things I do, that make you think I’m heartless, _those_ things I do to hide. I never was (heartless). But it was essential that you see me as another Evgeny, a solitary, loveless creature. Or else you might suspect how very singular I was in my affections.

You wouldn’t understand what it is like to have only one of each passion: One city, one street, one profession, one man. There can be no others (London, Baker, deduction, John). But for you, who love so widely, you man of three cities (Edinburgh, Kandahar, London), you of countless streets, you soldier-doctor-cowboy-sailor — how catholic you are in your regard. You love them all. 

You will sit, always, to take tea with Mrs Hudson in the evenings; you accept her bribes of biscuits, fix her plumbing woes, make her pardon my negligence with your well-timed nods and hums. And for me? A reprimand: I should leave you alone, not interrupt your dates, stop spying on you! 

And your patients! What I would do to sit on your consulting table, to run my hands over the cheap butcher’s paper and kick my heels against the helpless footstand, to wait while you revise my chart, record my rank and station in lines that begin: ‘Pt reported’ and ‘Prior history of’ and ‘Follow-up to occur in two months’. How mundane, such reports, and yet — to have all of your attention, for those slender fifteen minutes, directed at the echo in my chest, the hue of my blood, the pulse of my heart, and to think how you’d record those metrics in your school boy’s hand, all UPPER CASE and EXCLAMATORY and ABBREVIATED, those details of my life compressed in one golden quarter-hour, one A4, my vita: _SH, 34yo right-handed female of English descent, with a history of cocaine abuse and chronic insomnia, no known drug allergies, presenting with a fluttering in the chest and a shortness of breath, occasional dizziness, cause unknown. To return in 20 days time for further consultation. Signed, J. Watson, MB BS._ Your little day, your little months, your little half a year —

I would steal your little hours, wrap them close round me; tear out your earbuds, lock you in with me at 221B, to answer not a knock, no calls, no clients, no blogs…

 _Your blog_ , one protests ( _I_ protest — in hope, eternal). 

Your blog is my greatest hope and my greatest frustration, for in telling the story of our cases, you tell so little of _me,_ of why I do the work I do, and much less of _us,_ of what it means for me to have you with me, my modern Boswell, my doctor, my friend.

There are others who read between the lines: Ella, Murray, Harriet on occasion.

( _I_ will not, because _you_ will not. You see but you do not observe. You will not look. And I with my eyes wide open, unable to look away.)

You overlook what is most essential, always: the tobacco-timbre of one’s voice; the cut of one’s coat (menswear; last season; heathered black wool; red buttonhole, hand sewn — _by whose hand?_ , one might ask, even if it be one's own: delicate, feminine, practiced at darning and mending, those old tasks you had forgotten were still learned); the deceit in my eyes when I say, ‘Alone is what I have,’ and ‘Alone protects me,’ and ‘I don’t have friends’.

By ‘alone’ I mean ‘ _alone with you,’_ at one with you, my attention set on one and one alone, on _you._ Alone with you, John. 

I don’t have (other) friends, because I have _you_ , and you — one — are sufficient.  You suffice, you singular you: you fulfill all categories of longing, you answer all my doubts.

This is my love letter, which I shall never send — while you, down below, screw tight the faucet, check for leaks, and prepare for bed. 

Be careful, John, to mend the leaks, to tie tight the knots, for you have my (most singular) heart.


	2. Carioca

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Quando se ama não é preciso entender o que se passa lá fora, pois tudo passa a acontecer dentro de nós”  
> ― Clarice Lispector, Brazilian poet
> 
> 'When one loves, it's not necessary to understand what goes on in the world outside, because everything that matters happens first within us.'

I wonder, not infrequently, what you would have thought of me if we had met before we did.

Forgetting, for a moment, the sour half-decade from 25 to 30, what would you have thought of me at 15, at 18, at 22?

Fifteen, then. Can you imagine my public school years? The rage at being smarter than everyone else, and still having to play by their rules? The shame of spots and long tangled hair that _wouldn’t_ lie flat, and moreover, the injustice of still having two baby teeth when you were inches taller than all the other students? You can imagine it, I’m sure, but I’d ask that you don’t.

We lived near my school and my mother wanted me close, she worried over me then as Mycroft does now ( _when I say worry…_ ), so I was a day student. More’s the pity; they say I missed those important opportunities for _female companionship_ and _connection_ and late night dorm pranks, missed reading Anaïs Nin to the other girls in the attic, missed the excitement of a package or a weekend visit. Home was dull, just Mummy and me and Mrs Edgwood, but there was the laboratory Mycroft helped me cobble together, and the years didn’t pass as miserably as one would have expected. 

You’ll forgive me for not lingering on fifteen.

At eighteen, I took my gap year in Brazil. My uncle worked for the consulate in Rio, had for years as a sort of permanent attaché (meaning: _spy —_ but not to worry: as you’ll never read this, I’m not giving away any secrets), and had managed to marry a Brazilian steel heiress and produce three Anglo-Brazilian sons, all older than I, who lived at home with all the comfort their mother and maids could provide. There I entered, into a home of little princes, my aunt Clarice’s long-wished-for daughter. No matter that I spoke no Portuguese when I arrived, and she little English — but you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that Clarice was ignorant — she spoke French, and German, and Spanish of course, and a little Russian from her grandmother, and was better educated than most English people, and we did well enough with our shared French verbs. And conjugations weren’t so important, after all, because beaches and beauty parlors, it seems, are the universal language of Brazil. (That, and I learned Portuguese as quickly as you would expect from a Holmes.)

Tia Clarice taught me how to cut my hair so that it fell lightly, in great waves past my shoulders — head-turning hair, my cousin Marcelo told me when I came home from the salon, feeling light-headed and liberated from the burden of so many feet of prudish, Victorian hair left behind. (I forgot to mention that, at age 15, I had the ridiculous notion, probably culled from some misguided reading of Dickens or the American Alcott, that it would be rather fetching to be able to _sit on my own hair._ — Again, I am glad that you will never read this.)

 Tia Clarice bought me my first bikini, told me I had a _bunda_ to die for, made me wax my legs and everything in between, and declared that coral was my shade. She showed me where I could get the freshest juices (in Leblon), taught me to sunbathe and watch my purse at the same time (in Ipanema), brought me to the best galleries (in Santa Tereza), and refused to let me go alone to see the Cristo Redentor statue, declaring it a ‘ _monstruosidade_ ’ and an affront to her atheism.

Everything was new about Brazil, and I went along so readily with anything she suggested, that it didn’t occur to me that _I_ was changing, along with my surroundings. 

I saw how I changed by the expressions in my cousins’ eyes, by the glances they sent my way when Tia Clarice wasn’t watching. Then, the greatest change: one evening Vidigal, the youngest, kissed me. 

(You probably don’t approve, do you, of kissing cousins? But whom else could I trust, so far from home? Who else would look after me so thoroughly as Aunt Clarice’s youngest son? Sweet Vigidal, just 22 himself, long-lashed and lush-lipped, just finished his degree in engineering, waiting the summer before he started to work.)

The two of us had gone body-surfing in Ipanema and I was in the patio afterwards, washing the sand off my feet with a garden hose, when Vidigal came up from behind and kissed the nape of my neck, the flesh of my shoulders. I lost my grip on the hose and watched, startled, as it writhed over the patio floor like an agonized snake, spraying us as it went. Vidigal’s arms were still around me, his mouth close to my ear, and it only took a quick turn of my head to put my lips to his and pull his wet body closer to mine.

(From then on I was well-looked after, indeed. Make of that what you will.)

Then the invitations started to come, from Vidigal and Marcelo first, and later from their friends; invitations to go to late-night house parties on someone’s rooftop _terraça_ , where I learned to crush limes for caipirinhas and flirt with my hips, and where I was told, for the first time, that I was beautiful, stammered out in hesitant English by a green-eyed boy from São Paulo. (Vidigal minded, but he made up for it later.)  

You might have liked me then, John, if you could ever believe that I was the person I was that year. (And you wonder that I can put on disguises so easily!) What other chance would I have had to reinvent myself, without Brazil? It was only a year, I told myself; what did it matter if I left chemistry well enough alone for a change, if I played a part I would never have another chance to learn so well, from such an expert in femininity? 

(Irene Adler had nothing on the _brasileiras._ _Nada_.And you thought I disliked her because I was a _prude_?)

My mother was respectable, sexless, resigned to motherhood; Aunt Clarice was different. She was a professor of history, specialized in the Brazilian baroque, wrote lengthy books that rehabilitated the lives of 18th-century prostitutes and former slaves — and yet she had a standing weekly manicure appointment, bought her clothes in São Paulo, and wasn’t ashamed to say that she’d had ‘some work done’, herself. What a study in contradictions! What an opportunity — to _learn,_ if nothing else _._ And so I learned. I copied her so perfectly — her gestures, her carriage, her wardrobe of whites and golds— so that as long as I didn’t speak, the waiters and porters and taxi drivers all thought I was her daughter.

Bleak, then, was the Cambridge winter when I returned to England.

I like to think that, by telling you of my year in Brazil, you might feel as those young men felt towards me, you might see me as young and enchanting and just-scarcely-aware of (my) beauty, ready and willing to be seduced, and not as whatever Virgin Queen you’ve made me out to be.

You would have been 22, just out of your medical course at Uni. (We’ll give you your 22; my 22 was boring, first job out of uni, no sense of self or purpose — can you imagine me in _pharmaceuticals?_ )

And if you had ventured to Brazil, decided to spend your last few pounds on a spur-of-the-moment graduation trip to Rio? Not an unlikely proposition, for a young doctor with a taste for adventure. All that sun, all of those beaches, and between them the city with its white-tiled skyscrapers reaching up between hills and _morros,_ a city like no other. A city made for the night, for discotecas and courtyard patios and skinny-dipping under the southern cross, a city obsessed with flesh and with its own charm, oh solipsistic Rio, oh corporeal city! And who better to visit a city of bodies, really, than a newly-minted doctor?

Imagine you made your way there, somehow, in the year I was living in Leblon. It wouldn’t be hard to find the few British ex-pats in Rio, to wrangle your way into someone or other’s house party, ingratiate yourself with the cariocas, and pass ships in the night.

Now imagine me speaking to you in a language that sounds like love-making, passing for Brazilian, with my new freckles and my sandals and my white trousers, smoking a clove cigarette and dangling my toes in a swimming pool. You would have been intimidated, at first, by how directly I’d look at you, all cards on the table, so to speak, and you’d wrack your brains for a few works of Portuguese you could use to pull. I’d take pity on you, at last, and speak to you in your language, in your own accent, and you’d laugh even though the joke was on you, relieved that we could _talk_ and disappointed that it might only be _talk,_ after all, and not whatever else you had expected.

It might have been that, too, if only you’d been there one of those nights.

No one would have minded if I’d taken someone back to my room, much less a compatriot. No one would have blinked an eye if you had come down with me at breakfast, taken your _cafezinho_ very strong _,_ spoken a few amiable words about football to Vidigal and Marcelo, and headed on your own way, to catch a flight to São Paulo, or the falls at Iguaçu _,_ to round out whatever Brazilian holiday you had in mind. We’d say good-bye, with the false regret of one-night lovers in foreign lands; shallow promises to _get in touch when we get back to London_ , to exchange post cards or phone numbers or whatever people did before the Internet, whatever ways strangers had of finding each other after long absences. And you’d go your way, back to Barts, and I’d go mine, on to Cambridge a few months later, as experienced with the ways of the world as I’d ever be.

So that was me, at 18.

How would you respond if, one night, you came back to the flat to find me sitting on Vidigal’s lap, as we used to do, speaking low words to each other in that language of long-ago? Would you be startled to see me thus, all tenderness and _carinho_ with another person? You don’t believe I have it in me to be so welcoming; you think I put up walls with everyone.

Not with everyone. But yes, for now, with you. Until I know more. 


	3. Sample selection

When you tell me I’m ‘brilliant’ or ‘deadly’ or ‘fantastic’ or any of the trite compliments you throw my way, thoughtlessly, I want to turn around and box your ears and _make_ you say it again and again, until I go dizzy with the pleasure of your admiration. 

Why do you tell me so frequently and so earnestly that you admire me, when it only makes me lose my train of thought and pull at my hair and run away from you so that I can catch my breath? You don’t know what this hope does to me, the desire to hear you say, again and again, another variation on the song of ‘ _Sherlock you’re perfect Sherlock you’re fine Sherlock everything is really going to be all right_ ,’ when I don’t know that it is. I don’t know what you want from me, can’t trust it when you hold it out so freely to me (to everyone) and expect me to catch it and throw it back at you. 

And then your praise makes me suspicious, because if a man _were_ to court me, silver-tongued and thorough, he could hardly do better than you are doing. 

You court me unawares, and I cannot wish unsaid your praise of me. 

I store up your careless phrases, a rosary of words to run over in my solitude. (And you ask me why I cannot sleep, what I do those nights I cannot work, cannot play. I run over your words, though they pain me to consider.)

And then my mind takes a melancholy course — runs green and yellow, envy with caution — and I think of all of _them,_ those other woman,as if by numbering their defects I could bring on sweet sleep.

I can’t understand why you purport to admire _me_ so much, and yet will date women like Sarah Sawyer.

(Leaving off, for the moment, the ethical problems with _dating your own boss._ Because if I brought that up you’d certainly defend yourself by reminding me that you ‘Didn’t date her for very long.’ And god forbid you bring out some omnibus measure prohibiting all dating of female colleagues, because where would I stand with you then?) 

So yes, this one is the whingy letter where I tell you all of the things that are wrong with the women that you date, here in this letter because you won’t let me tell you in person. 

(When really, John, the main _point_ is to tell you in person, you infuriating git, so that you’ll stop with the dating, stop with the entire endeavor of looking outside for someone when there’s someone nearby who is more than willing to surrender her dignity for the sake of —

* * *

As I was saying. The problems with the women you date.

Or, as I think more about this, the problems with how _you_ date. Because surely the problem is not all _out there,_ in whatever poor creatures you set your eyes on (and in this I dohave some genuine feminine sympathy, though that may astonish you); surely some most of the problem lies in _you_ and in what you are looking for, or in how you look for it.

Let me say, as a precursor, that while I believe there must be at least one _some_ women in London who would make adequate partners for a person such as yourself, your current methods of finding such partners are unsystematic, unrefined, and highly unlike to yield what you seek.

You are a man who loves adventure, and yet you date women in highly predictable career paths — general practice medicine, social work, teaching — who are unable to provide you with the amount of danger and stimulation that you crave. This is so obvious as to be child’s play; you’ve noticed this yourself, I dare say, and yet won’t take steps to correct the problem. Dare I suggest some self-sabotage? That, perhaps, you aren’t really looking for what you think you are looking for? (Still I may hope…)

So, first problem is sample selection. Easy enough to fix, but the motivation seems to be lacking.

The second, and much larger, problem is the old-fashioned misogyny you mistakenly think is charming. You know what I mean: the winking and leering, the exaggerated holding out of doors, the rapid-fire invitations to dinner and dancing, the compliments that were old 50 years ago (‘It’s a lot more beautiful now you’re here’, etc.).

I don’t know if it’s the influence of the army, or if it’s the false confidence of the short man, or if one day I will learn that you have a disproportionately large set of assets, but these tactics bewilder me, John. I honestly don’t know what to make of them. I am astonished every time you pull someone, because it means that there _still_ exist women who are stupid enough to fall for that balderdash.

(Mycroft told me, you should know, that you made a pass at Anthea the first time you met her. _You made a pass at Anthea!_ My brother had just kidnapped you, and all you could think of was how to get up his assistant’s skirts? That was a bit much, even for you. I like to think you were so taken aback by his maneuver that you somehow confused ‘fight or flight’ with ‘feed and fuck’ and thus asked Anthea to dinner, but I fear that you were just being your usual cocksure, manly self.)

I also don’t know what to make of the fact that you use none of these tactics on me. On the other hand, I ask myself, do I even _want_ you to use them on me? I think I’d laugh if you told me my legs ‘go on for miles’ or that I’m like a ‘tall glass of water,’ when you know that the one thing I’m not is a _relief._ No, I much prefer your bluntness, the camaraderie of locker rooms and football matches, the way you sometimes follow me into the loo because you just don’t think of me as _going to the ladies._ I prefer to be one of the lads, because if the alternative is to be eyed up and down every time I wear a skirt, I’ll say _No, thank you, kind sir, thank you but No._

And yet — if there could be some halfway place, somewhere between this sexless flatshare and a full-blown courtship, I’d be up for the challenge. 

But instead we have this friendship, so intimate that you call it a ‘partnership,’ so sterile that it fails to satisfy. 

I solve cases, you blog about them, and we come home to separate beds followed by separate mornings. You rise early, like the rest of London, all _middle-class sensibilities_ and _Protestant work ethic_ and so on, while I, like a lazy French housewife, spend the morning in my peignoir, smoking cloves and plucking at Bartók on the violin (or so you imagine). Or perhaps I nibble on the toast soldiers you’ve left behind as I receive  callers clients in the drawing room, run my fingers over their printed names, and wish you were here to relieve the tedium. (It’s rather the latter, I think.)

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I text you not so much out of an uncontrollable deficit of attention, pathologizable and thus comprehensible, but because _I love you_ and I want you near me, and there is no physic that cures that affliction. 


	4. Finders keepers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really ashamed for having left this story for so long without updating. Let this be a lesson to myself to not post WIPs unless I'm positive that I can regularly update them!
> 
> Unbeta'ed.

If I were to talk to anyone about this, I suppose it would be Mycroft, who knows me the best and has known me the longest. But I will never mention it to him, because he’s an interfering lout, for one, and because I already know what he can say, can imagine the dialogue in my head as clearly as if we were having it in the lounge of the Diogenes Club.

 _There’s no reason you shouldn’t tell John all this,_ he would say, sipping on a plain tonic water, one foot on the other knee, just a slant of sock showing beneath the trouser leg. He might shake his foot, as he does when on edge, and sip daintily at his tonic, and clear his throat while looking over the rim of his glass, so pointedly, to speak to me. _What do you hope to gain from concealment?_

And I might say that that was ripe, coming from someone who makes such a fuss over secrets.

 _You’re afraid, Sherlock,_ he would say. _I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge before._ He’d look at me side-eyed, pensive, thinking out the rest of our conversation, always a step ahead.

_Unless this is not a challenge?_

Now he’s getting somewhere.

It wasn’t a challenge, at first; I almost dismissed you out of hand, seeing how easily you’d eat from my own. How many people have made that mistake, I wonder? How many people have looked at your wide eyes and your ready grin and your strong hands and thought that they understood you? And how many really did?

I certainly don’t feel like I understand you.

I don’t understand why you stay at Baker Street when they’ve raised your pay enough at the surgery that you could afford the flat on your own — this flat, or any flat in the vicinity. And surely, with the way you nag at me to _Sherlock hang up your towels Sherlock nitrous oxide in the kitchen is not funny Sherlock do I have to do everything around here—_ you’d be better off on your own. I’m hardly the comforting or domestic type, though for domestics — well, those. Yes. Plenty of those, lately. You, _for god’s sake when I said to hang up the towel I didn’t mean you to walk around starkers Sherlock this is the last time I’m cleaning the refrigerator Sherlock your brother called me again Sherlock I’m leaving Sherlock it’s dinner with Mycroft for chrissake don’t you have anything to say about that?_

I was rehearsing the Stravinsky and the double stops were particularly vexing, which any idiot with half an ear could have worked out; it was at least five hours before I’d need another meal; and you were bluffing about dinner with Mycroft, I knew you were.

Except you weren’t bluffing.

You had dinner with Mycroft and _you were invited along Sherlock there’s no use whinging about it now you git_

So, instead of the conversation I had imagined _I_ would have with Mycroft at the Club, there’s a conversation _you_ had with Mycroft — a secret, cunning conversation that I’ve been doing my best this week to work out.

There’s no use telling me you didn’t talk about me. Of course you talked about me; that’s obvious from the way you tease me about missing the evening, the way you evade my questions, the way you won’t quite look me in the eye and that has less to do with the properly hung towel and more to do with something that Mycroft told you.

What could Mycroft have told you?

I’m not idiot enough to leave an electronic trail, and he’s not persistent enough to comb the flat for my _dear diary,_ or whatever he’d call these pages.

* * *

_THE BERK!!!_

And how would he feel if _I_ went around having private dinners with Anthea and started speculating on _his_ feelings for her? Capital! And where’s his evidence, may I ask, that I’m _simply pining away_ for ‘dear John,’ as he calls you? And who’s to say that Mycroft is the one to do something about it? Treats me as if I hadn’t been on my own since I was 16, as if I hadn’t done _so much by myself —_ uni, rehab, chamber circuit, the Work, the flat, John — MINE.

That condescending, prying, soggy-bottomed, swine-nosed _sneak!_

When I asked you what you and Mycroft had discussed, you just shook your head and said, ‘Sherlock, your brother has the ridiculous idea that you’re pining away after me.’

‘Ridiculous,’ I muttered.

‘Exactly what _I_ said,’ you laughed. ‘I said, “Have you _seen_ Sherlock’s level of personal hygiene lately?” ’

‘That was for a case,’ I told you, a third time. ‘To enhance my temporary integration into the homeless network.’ You laid it on bit too thick, John; a few days without washing my hair hardly qualifies as poor hygiene. And I’d have thought you’d let me take a shower without ribbing me _again_ about that bl—dy towel.

‘You didn’t need to go that far that to blend in, Sherlock,’ you said. ‘In any case, I know you’re not pining after me.’

‘You do?’ I asked. You looked down your nose at me, or up your nose at me — I think I was standing over you, you were sitting on the divan when I came in, a cup of tea in your hands, and you smiled at me over the cup; Harney’s Tower-of-London blend. And then you laughed.

‘Don’t be silly,’ you said. ‘I know you.’

‘As well as anybody, I suppose,’ I said as sniffily as possible. I _sniffed_ at you, John, because you really know next to nothing about me.

( _And how could I know more?_ you might ask, _When you go around all haughty and secretive and won’t tell me anything about yourself? When you scoff at my musical taste when I invite you to the ballet, when you won’t come with me to Murray’s birthday, when you won’t tell me your own? How could I know anything about you?_

 _January 31,_ I want to tell you _. My birthday is January 31, and you’ve never asked._

_And Murray’s birthday?_

_I don’t know the man, John._

_You might get to know him if you make an effort._ )

You really know nothing about me, John. So I laughed with you, and changed the subject, and now I am back where I started. Alone with my little hours.

* * *

Sherlock —

~~Where to begin? Sherlock, I --~~

~~I just want to say that I didn’t mean to re~~

 

Sherlock-

 ~~I hope this isn’t a joke on your part.~~ I can’t believe you’d just leave these laying around.

~~Finder’s keepers.~~

 

Please come talk to me.

~John


	5. The little red book

John:

 _Lying_ around. I left them _lying_ around. Lie, lay, lain, lying, lies. ~~I’d ask you to forget what you read but then I~~

* * *

Sherlock – This is ridiculous. You have to talk to me. Please call me. I’ll be at the surgery most of the day but have some time from 10-11 and 1-2. Please call me then.

* * *

 

* * *

Are we going to write notes to each other like primary school students? Are you going to keep avoiding me, Sherlock?

* * *

_Yes. -- SH_

* * *

OK, Sherlock, if you won’t talk to me and if you leave the flat every time you know I’m coming back, I suppose I have no choice except to write to you. And apparently we are going to keep leaving notes for each other in this little red notebook like a pair of school girls or secret agents or something, which maybe is not too far off all things considered.

Sherlock, I know you weren’t lying to me (lie, lied, lying, lies, ha yes I found it thank you to online dictionaries). If this were all a joke you would have come back by now.

I keep going over this again and again, even though your handwriting is terrible and I couldn’t make out half of the words on the first go around. If you aren’t easy to understand when you’re speaking, you don’t make it any easier when you’re writing. God knows you’re a good liar, but I think you mean it this time. At least, I hope you mean it, because I want to talk more about it with you.

But given that you don’t want to _talk_ to me any time soon, if this journal was good enough for you, it’s certainly good enough for me. And I at least have the advantage of knowing that the person I’m writing to is going to read it.

Where to start?  

I didn’t know how lonely you were, Sherlock. I mean, I know you don’t have that many friends, but I didn’t really _know_ how lonely you were. I wish you could know how much less lonely I’ve felt since I’ve met you, if that is any consolation. Honestly, if I hadn’t met you when I did, I don’t know where I’d be right now. Probably in some miserable bedsit, stir-crazy and wishing I were back in Afghanistan, going half-mad from loneliness. Instead, I have you. And to hear that you’re lonely, that the person who has _given me so much_ STILL feels lonely – wow. I’m so, so sorry, Sherlock.

And I wish that I could do something to help with that, and if I understand you correctly then I already have, right? And that’s the _problem_ for you – that you like me a good deal more than you expected.

I don’t think this is a problem, but that’s something we’re going to have to _talk about_ , meaning talking in person. Come out, come out, wherever you are…

I like that you call me ‘dearest’. I didn’t think you’d use names like that. Am I, then, your ‘dearest’? (Your only dear, I'm hoping.)

Yes, I sometimes wondered if you had already known about me from Mike, but then seeing you deduce so many other people’s lives in the same way, well, I believed it.

So you liked the ballet after all. Some way you had of showing me, Sherlock! Usually a ‘thank you, I had a lovely time’ is the sort of thing to tell your date. And yes, I’m going to call it a date now, because we’re putting all the cards on the table and I might as well admit that I was asking you out on a date. And not only did you accept, but now I’m learning that you _wanted_ to go with me on a date, you _wanted_ my attention, you _wanted_ my regard.

Some way you have of showing it!

Can’t I persuade you to come home?

It’s late and I am going to bed. Stick around tomorrow and we’ll talk?

* * *

I know you were here last night, Sherlock. I didn’t hear you – you’d make a good thief – but I put one of your long hairs on top of the journal and it wasn’t there this morning, so I know you were here and you read this.

What are you waiting for? I’m not going to talk until you do, Sherlock. This isn’t fair. You can’t do this.

* * *

 I can too do this. You aren’t supposed to read things that don’t belong to you.

\--SH

* * *

Good evening, Sherlock. Nice to hear from you again. As for reading things that don’t belong to me – well, the notebook is still here, so I assume you have no objections to me continuing where I left off?

I really don’t know what to say, Sherlock. I feel foolish that I didn’t catch on sooner, but really, what could you expect? If you tried so hard to hide yourself, to hide your feelings from me, it’s hardly my fault that I couldn’t guess. And if I ‘overlook the essential,’ well, you and your red herrings had something to do with that, didn’t they?

If you only knew what I did all day at the surgery, I don’t think you’d be jealous of my patients. You are a hundred times more interesting than they are, but I have to pay the rent, and I like being a doctor. Really, if you wanted me to perform an exam, you had only to say so. :)

About Afghanistan and Scotland and London: while I’ve lived in those places, it doesn’t mean that I’m fickle, Sherlock, or that I don’t know what I want. I know what I want. I just didn’t know that I could have it.

* * *

What are you saying, John?

What do you want?

* * *

I want you to come back. Come back home, Sherlock. You want my hours? They’re here for the asking.

* * *

And you’re still not here, Sherlock. You haven’t been here in several days. I don’t even know if you’ve read this.

Later: Mycroft told me you had gone to Paris for a few days on a case. I should know better than to be disappointed, but I am. I miss you, but I like finding your replies here when I least expect it. 

I don’t know if I should be insulted or flattered by your letters, really, now that I’ve read them about 20 times.

Do you know the part I like best? When you describe your time in Brazil. I like thinking about you when you were younger, Sherlock. You sound like you were happy then, and I don’t think you’ve been happy in a very long time. And I wonder if you wanted to tell me about those times, when you were happy, because you want to be happy again, and you are inviting me to be happy with you. At least, that is what I think you’re saying.

I’ve also wondered what it would have been like if we had met earlier, Sherlock. But I remind myself that we weren’t the same people then that we are now, and I doubt you would have liked me very much. I was too interested in myself, I was too cocky. It wasn’t just the injury that changed that; I had started to change before that, but the injury certainly helped me come down a few notches. I thought I knew everything when I was 22, and as you probably _did_ know everything, even at 22, you would have disliked me intensely. And I would have disliked you too, even more so because you would have been way out of my league, Sherlock, and you probably would have let me know that right away.

Not much changes, does it?

If I only ever asked you on one date, and then backtracked and pretended it wasn’t a date when I thought you didn’t like it – well, that was because you have always been in another class altogether. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and I’m not ashamed of who I am or where I come from, but you, Sherlock, are in an entirely different category. I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that you wrote these letters to _me,_ to _me,_ John Watson. Forgive me if it takes me a while.

Your absence isn’t helping, either. I want to talk to you. I want to look at you, I want to touch you. Would you let me? Would you let me sit here with you and just hold you against me, tuck you in next to my side? That would be enough, for now. I want to take my time with you, Sherlock. Oh, how I want to take my time!

(Of course, taking my time doesn’t mean that I want you to stay away forever. If you aren’t back by Friday I am going to call Mycroft again.)


End file.
